P.E.D.A.L.S.
Prevail (values) Explore Discover Achieve Learn Share Basically lessons I've learned from being a gamer. These can be seen as the basic styles of play that many players use in their approach to a game, or what play-styles they prefer, and dimensions of game design that might be included in a particular game. These are also some basic steps in mastering just about anything, as they are analytical tools in their own right. See an example here. Be prepared to see the real world in a slightly different way. Buckle your seat belt, Dorothy. P:D Prevail Resist. Survive. Build. Defend. Grow. Control. Attack. Destroy. Kill. Conquer. These are the basic values we can extract from most video games, especially in their earlier examples. The Giant Battle of Good Versus Evil (or more honestly, Us Versus Them) is a near-constant theme in the vast majority of games, and the few exceptions that seem to emphasize social or cooperative play are usually less than stellar successes, both in terms of coherent design, and in terms of popularity or revenue. Every game is a vehicle of a dramatic narrative, and what could be more dramatic than a fight to the death? Similarly, what narrative is closer and more relevant to us than our own personal narrative? Thus many game narratives have us fighting for our very lives. Interestingly, one of the first games that had any serious applications in the real world was the Prussian Kriegsspiel. In an any honest analysis of goal-oriented behavior, where "results" are the primary consideration, games don't differ all that much from many professions in real life; arrests, convictions, hours worked, years of seniority, academic grades and standing, tenure, publication, citation -- the list of "character" traits in real life is nearly endless, and in a scary way, under truly critical examination, seem no more meaningful than game accomplishments. That is, if these measures are meaningful at all, it is likely as much accidental and incidental as it might be by design. They serve more as ranks in an army -- regimentation -- than as any useful measure of valuable talents used in peaceful pursuits. The people we all seem to admire most are the very people who seem to transcend these measurements, even sometimes seeming to willingly ignore them. Authentically heroic revolutionary leaders who throw off tyranny, entrepreneurs who make or remake entire industries, philanthropists and experts who address real problems that no one else has seen fit to even acknowledge because there is no real benefit to these parties -- again the list seems almost endless. This seems to point out a problem in our approaches to both games and real life, in that much of our activity in both domains seems to be based more on the values of confrontation than on any other values. Our Western adversarial system of justice, majority democracy, and a host of other systems central to our societies is firmly grounded in a combative, mutually exclusive, and dichotomous set of values. Often these systems come laden with implicit or explicit moral overtones that may or may not apply to any particular situation. Is there really a clear-cut "good guy" or "bad guy" in a vote for a school budget? Why does the use of a majority vote seem to imply that there is, a least to me? Similarly, games seem to over-stress this aspect simply because it makes it fairly easy to inject drama into a narrative, or in simple games, just write up some collision detection, or similar easy code, and write up a set of rules for how big each bang is. "Pew, pew." Vote with your weapon. The victors write the history books. Explore Run around. Go everywhere. Do everything. Talk to people. Watch other people do stuff. Imitate them and start getting stuff, or getting stuff done. Learn all the basic stuff that others take for granted -- the easy stuff. Discover This is where you aim to do stuff that is novel and original. Do things of which you don't know all the possible outcomes. Do stuff you've never heard of before. Do stuff you presume no one has done before. Do something silly just to see what happens. Make mistakes on purpose, essentially to discover what the consequences are. Achieve This is you measuring yourself against others, who and what you were yesterday, and who you think you want to be tomorrow. This is being someone and having stuff. This is the difference between insanity and eccentricity. P;D In both games and real life, there's commonly just too much overlap between the accomplishments available to a fairly large population, with only a handful of metrics to measure accomplishment in any particular role, and a relative paucity of roles to play as well. A huge number of roles in which a small handful of people engaged in rather more friendly competition can only seem like a pipe-dream right now, but both games and real life are rather more vast than we give them credit for presently. I'll just pop out for a moment, make a round trip through time 50 years into the future, and tell you my findings tomorrow, if you behave yourselves properly in the meantime, that is! Sometimes you just really need my help though, don't you? P:D Learn Share